TV Words

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Dec 6, 2006, at 2:58 PM, Charlie Doyle wrote:

> And then there's the infinitely irritating Rachael Ray, whose "Food
> Channel" cooking show regularly uses such cutesy terms as
> "sammy" ('sandwich'; for all I know, however, that word may occur
> more general in some dialect that I'm glad I don't speak),

discussed here last year:

Date:         Sat, 5 Feb 2005 21:42:17 -0500
Sender:       American Dialect Society Mailing List
From:         "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject:      Re: "sammies"; was:  Becky Mercuri's book  American
Sandwich

I asked a couple of younger persons whether they recognized "sammy" =
"sandwich". Initially both said "no" but on second thought one said
that he
had seen "raspberry sammy" (some kind of cookie or so) at Bruegger's
Bagels
and supposed this "sammy" stood for "sandwich". Maybe he's right. I
remembered then that I had seen that item also, and that I had had some
momentary curiosity as to what its name could mean: my two idle
transient
notions had been [1] "samosa" (IIRC the sammy was a little triangular
thing) and [2] the given name "Sammy", and the possibility of "sandwich"
had not entered my so-called mind.

-- Doug Wilson

i recall it as a precious briticism, but it may be spreading.


> "EVOO" (pronounced initialistically; 'extra virgin olive oil'),
> "zush" (/zUS/; 'quick swirl or shake of a mixture in a pan'--or
> something like that)

"zhoozh" and various other spellings (and pronunciations), from
fashion slang.  spread wide by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

arnold

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